Technology Companies Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and so on : Alibaba already has a voice assistant way better than Google’s

2018年12月5日星期三

Alibaba already has a voice assistant way better than Google’s

...Take this exchange at the beginning of the call, translated from Mandarin:

Agent: Hello, I am Cainiao’s voice assistant. I am—
Customer: Hello.
A: Yes, hi, you have package scheduled for morning delivery to 588 Culture West Road. Is it convenient for you to receive?
C: Who are you?
A: I am Cainiao’s voice assistant. I’d like to confirm your morning delivery to 588 Culture West Road. Does that work for you?
C: I’m not home in the morning.
A: Then do you have another address that you’d like to use?

Within 30 seconds, the agent has smoothly handled three common, and tricky, conversational ingredients: interruption, nonlinear conversation, and implicit intent. Interruption is self-explanatory: the agent can respond to the customer’s interruption and continue relaying relevant information without starting over or skipping a beat.

The nonlinear conversation occurs when the customer asks, “Who are you?” This requires the agent to register that the customer is not answering the preceding question but rather starting a new line of inquiry. In response, the agent reintroduces itself before returning to the original question.

The implicit intent occurs when the customer responds, “I’m not home in the morning.” He never explicitly says what he actually means—that home delivery won’t work—but the agent is able to read between the lines and follow up sensibly.

These elements may be boringly commonplace in human conversations, but machines often struggle to handle them. That Alibaba’s voice assistant can do so suggests it’s more sophisticated than Google Duplex, judging from similar sample calls demoed by Google. It’s worth noting, however, that Alibaba’s demo call is designed for onstage presentation; the experience could differ in reality.

Currently, the agent is used only to coordinate package deliveries, but Jin said it could be expanded to handle other topics. He wouldn’t fully reveal how the assistant was trained. But he alluded to using the massive number of customer recordings at the company’s disposal, in addition to other resources. On a typical day the company averages 50,000 customer service calls, according to the presentation slides—a number that quintuples for Singles’ Day (November 11), its highest revenue-generating holiday of the year.

Alibaba is also developing digital assistants for other aspects of its business, including a food-ordering agent that can take your order in noisy restaurants and stores; a humanlike virtual avatar that can field questions about Alibaba products; and a price-haggling chatbot that is already used by 20% of sellers on Alibaba’s resale platform Xianyu...